Absolute Zero
by Prommytheus
Summary: A star falls to earth, an empire crumbles, and a prodigy hopes against hope. A demon rises from the rubble, and peace seems at once achieved - but for how long?
1. Chapter 1

As he falls, he wonders about the concept of death.

Death, as he understands it, is unpleasant. It is a sudden and painful rescinding of every sort of agency you had as a living being.

He doesn't know _death_ , though. He only knows _sleep._ His vision never fades to white, it fades to black. Somewhere, down the line, someone will need him again, and he will reawaken.

But will he?

A shattered piece of Weil's horn drifts past, and his attention is suddenly given to the ground, which seemed reassuringly distant only a few moments ago. Approaching at an increasingly fast pace, an already foregone conclusion dawns on him. He scowls.

Something explodes behind him, and he turns to look. Another chunk of Weil's misshapen, abominable corpse has had enough with the turbulence, and rockets past him in a million shards. His scowl worsens. This man, this one man, for whom power was everything, had singlehandedly almost ended the world thrice under his watch. He wanted only for the world to bow, and had wrought nothing but sorrow.

To be instrumental in his end was, perhaps, too much to ask—but he'd been granted it anyway, and the piper's outstretched hand began to look increasingly empty as the seconds stretched on, and the earth grew nearer. He was thankful, he thought, that there was nothing but desert where he was about to land.

People that told him about death always described some bright light at the end of a dark tunnel, or seeing the events of your life flashing before your eyes. Should he ever meet them again, he decided to call them liars. As death approached, he didn't feel serene, or some great sense of purpose.

He felt hot. He could feel his heatsinks working overtime as he desperately tried to not explode, he could feel the aggressive hum of a generator in his chest, and most of all, he felt _stupid._ Someone of greater integrity, he thought, might have been able to find a way to put an end to all of this without killing himself—X probably could have done it.

Zero imagined that he might've felt something cold inside, but the heat seemed more pervasive than ever. He stared at the desert as he approached, and mouthed something distasteful just before the impact shook the earth.


	2. Chapter 2

The Resistance camp waits with baited breath as the transmission cuts to static.

A star departs from Ragnarok and streaks across the sky like some terrible harbinger, and tears brew in her eyes. Zero can't be dead. He's never dead— _never._ It doesn't... it _shouldn't_ work like this. The girl in her gives a million excuses, and the prodigy shakes her head.

She _knows_ there's no way to survive a fall of that distance. She _knows_ that even a simpleton could figure that a body would burn up in the fall from orbit. She _knows_ that Zero went into that fight with the knowledge he was never coming back.

But she _hopes._

God's revolver clicks in the brief seconds before impact. Everyone falls silent, and everything fades away but the streak of orange on the horizon.

Impact is quiet. The most notable thing about it is the corona of light that fades outward from ground zero, like a firework going off in the distance.

Ciel feels like she's been punched in the stomach. Numbly, she checks her communicator—static. A red cross fills the screen, and the feed cuts out. From somewhere around her, she hears orders being shouted to soldiers. Resistance grunts and commanders begin filing into the last of their working vehicles. By the time she finds the nerve to look up, the boxy trucks are specks on the desert landscape.

Cerveau is there. He's leaned up against the side of her trailer. For what seems like a first in a very long time, his eyes aren't covered by a visor. He's turning the small rig over in his hands, something worried polluting his expression, furrowing his brow.

He noticed her with a start, and drops the visor in the dust. He pressed his lips together and bent down to pick them up.

"... Faucon set up a perimeter around the crash sight." He states, almost offhandedly. "The wreckage needs inspecting." A pained look crosses his face, and the pad of his thumb grazes the inside of the piece of headgear. "Identifying, and that whole mess."

The word "identifying" is strangely offensive to her, and she feels tears begin to streak down her cheeks. A tug at her skirts alerts her to the fact that Alouette is still there, hugging her teddy-bear to her chest with one arm.

"Ciel?"

The scientist dries her eyes.

"Is he gonna be okay?"

That question stuns her. She swallows and, very carefully, lowers herself down to talk to the small reploid girl.

"It's okay... I'm sure Zero is still... out there."

 **A/N: Yes, there's some divergence from the canonical ending to the final scene here, my apologies to those who might've seen and thought I'm some ignorant boob. This _is_ an AU fic, though, so cut me some slack! Kidding, really, I love you guys. See you next chapter.**


	3. Chapter 3

The site of the crash is an ungainly thing, strewn with wreckage and debris. The earth, grudgingly acquiescing to the force of re-entry, is unsteady beneath them. The transport makes an unexpected dip to the left, and several resistance soldiers scramble to keep it upright while the driver hurriedly throws it in reverse, wheels spitting sand over the edge of the crater.

She watches from just to the side, her attention drawn to the noise more than anything else.

' _For such a busy place_ ' She thinks. ' _It is awfully quiet._ '

The howling of the wind above their heads seems to be the most palpable thing at present, the truck notwithstanding. The sun had set hours ago, and the harsh light of halogen lamps flooded the inside of the crash site.

Wire fences, rolled out from spools like chicken wire, circled what of the crash site that couldn't have a patrol stationed next to it. Ciel almost felt like some sort of prisoner, trapped behind the gleaming silver and under blinding white, and the dust in her shoe was beginning to turn into mud.

She shifted uncomfortably on her heels as the excavation team made away with another chunk of valuable metal, lifting it from the ground on the blocky feet of outdated exoskeletons, whose crude fingers dug painfully into the flesh of the salvaged alloy.

For the sake of professionalism, they were taking this step by step. From the outside in, very carefully picking and choosing what was and wasn't important, and taping off what was either suspect or altogether unidentified.

The gloves feel thick and stiff over her hands, starched by years of grime and dust, unwilling to respond. The small utility belt sags over her hip, and the unfeeling fingers grab it and tighten it almost without her noticing. Cerveau enters her peripheral vision, looking at her through his visor. He gestures for her to follow, and together they look into the dent that the salvaged chunk had left behind.

A cracked helmet lay abandoned in the dirt, and mismatched footprints fade in the face of the fierce wind.


	4. Chapter 4

He feels that to celebrate himself for an effort born out of pure stubbornness is a mistake. That same implacability is the only thing that has kept him alive all those years, decades, centuries, and by now he feels he is beginning to loathe it. It is a strange feeling that curdles his gut and quirks his lip, and forces him to continue marching on for the sake of sheer thick-headed determination.

The wind is unfavorable and unenlightening. It streaks his vision with static of such ferocity that he begins to doubt that he's going to make it. Where, exactly, is a question he hasn't figured out yet. Moving in and of itself seemed such an impossible concept a few hours ago, and by now he kept doing it mostly just to prove that he could.

 _Could_ and _Should_ are not dissimilar cousins, but the distinction between them was important, and lost on him at present.

Lots of things inside are broken. He doesn't know-diagnostics are one of many things beyond him at the moment-but he can feel it, almost like a festering sickness. His legs are different lengths. His right side feels markedly lighter than his left, and there is something dribbling out of his side and into the sand. The desert, the vast expanse of waste that lies before him, seems to stretch on forever. For all he knows, it does.

Lacking a mirror, he can only guess that one of his ears is missing. The wind howls louder on a side, and the dust catches and pickles there.

It isn't long before his vision begins to decrease in resolution. His movements grow more sluggish; his body is foolishly trying to conserve energy. He tries to laugh, but all that comes out is a spurt of something slick and black that dribbles down his chin and makes him feel sick. Seconds tick by with unbearable slowness as his surroundings are reduced first to a blocky blurr, and then to nothing. He feels himself stop, wobble, and then keel over into the dirt.

With what energy he has left, he mutters insults at the dirt. Failing that, he continues to think them, bashing away at it inside of the infinite blackness of his own mind until he can no longer feel the rough particles scratching away at what remained of his synthetic skin.

The last thing he hears before he drifts to sleep is the roaring of an engine.


	5. Chapter 5

The discovery is something he has trouble empathizing with.

She hasn't spoken much since she returned to basecamp, but he can tell that there's a quiet happiness-hopefulness, even-that permeates her. He doesn't ask or interrupt, and the construction bay she's confined herself in is quietly dropped from discussion. As the resistance's foremost technician and analyst, however, he has bigger fish to fry. One of them is Weil himself, or rather what's left of him. So very many things are evidently impossible about the functionality of the salvage; the possibility of it all excites him.

Interrupting his study, however, is one symptom of an absentee Ciel: a free-floating Alouette.

Without Ciel to look after her, the reploid girl finds herself most comfortable in his company. Or rather, in his office, quietly kicking her heels against the bottom of her chair. He can feel her staring at him, but he doesn't dare object. Even _he_ knows that this would be terrible time to act selfish, absorbed though he is in his study.

"Cerveau?" He's surprised to hear her speak. With terrible difficulty, he tears himself away from the computer screen, fingers finding the bridge of his nose and not-so-gently massaging the bags under his his eyes.

"Yes, Alouette?" He tries his best not to sound curt, but the hours spent in front of the screen are beginning to take their toll on his temperament. She doesn't seem to mind.

"Can Ciel fix Zero?" The question catches him off guard, and he pitches slightly to the left before his hand catches him on the edge of the table. He shakes his head and runs back over the question, briefly. Half-truths and placations bubble away at the inside of his skull. "It's just that, I know it's bad..." A sound of frustration bubbles up through Cerveau's throat, and he draws in a deep breath through his nose before he sets his visor on his desk and takes a seat next to her.

"Ciel is ... she's going to try, alright?" Comforting gestures having never been his strong suit, he can't help but feel incredibly awkward as he sets his hand on her shoulder. "It'd be a sure-fire thing if we were back at the base, but." He hangs on the last word. Alouette surprises him again when she nods, her stuffed animal still held firmly to her chest.

"That's okay. As long as she's trying her best, right?"

Words escape him for several extremely long seconds. When he finds his voice again, he chuckles wryly.

"That's right."


End file.
